Friday, August 17, 2012

Unused DEVIL MAY CARE cover artwork

Thomas Nixdorf, author of the first comprehensive James Bond poster book, Licence to Thrill (1997) and who now collects original James Bond artwork, generously shares with us today these two unused cover art paintings by Mark Stutzman for the U.S. edition of Sebastian Faulk's Devil May Care (2008). I love this kind of thing!

Thinking about it a little more, I feel that the publishers should just treat the new Bonds as normal thrillers instead of being burdened down with the 'it's BOND!' baggage. Sure, stick a big 007 on it, or James Bond, but the covers should be modern, like the attempt for the rereleased Flemings. They're not perfect, but they're a step in the right direction. We want Joe Public to pick up Carte Blanche, Devil May Care, etc, not just people like us, so they should look like other thrillers on the market, such as the rather wonderful Jack Reacher covers.

Wow, those are awesome! Thanks for sharing. I can see why they opted to shroud Bond's face in shadow on the final version, but I do really love the concept with the Walther on the ground. And I'll second Dan Gale's comment that ALL of these are INFINITELY better than the atrocious UK cover art for this book!

I agree Gypsy, new Bond stories should be more contemporary from now on but this story was the centenarry story set in 1968 in a story that played like a 'best of' compilation, it's retro by its very nature so it earned its retro look cover. I'm not sure how they'll modernise the cover of the next one, also set in the 60s. It's interesting to note how young Bond looks on these covers and yet it wasn't until CARTE BLANCHE that he was presented as a younger character. He looks about 25 in these illustrations.